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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. How has the narrator and Gin's relationship changed by the end of the summer?

2. From the context of page 234, what "apocalypse" is the allusion to the Four Horsemen referring to?

3. What repetition technique is used in the story's opening paragraph?

4. What is the tone of the narrator's description of people in Gold Coast apartments having sex?

5. To what British author does the narrator ironically compare himself near the end of the story?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is the rhetorical purpose of the narrator's comments about the "bloodless way in which a young man discards his own virginity" (235)?

2. What does the narrator say might have happened if the dead woman had washed up beside them while he and Gin were trying to have sex on the beach, and why is Gin so offended?

3. What is the rhetorical purpose of including the narrator's loss of the condom right before the drowned woman's body is discovered?

4. What point about the relationship between men and women is made by the details the narrator observes on his train ride home after the night at Oak Street Beach?

5. Where are some of the places listed in the poem's opening paragraph, and how do they convey the couple's youth?

6. What is the rhetorical effect of the diction used in the following description of the setting at Oak Street Beach: "The lake had turned hot pink, rose rapture, pearl amethyst with dusk, then washed in night black with a ruff of silver foam. Beyond a momentary horizon, silent bolts of heat lightning throbbed" (234)?

7. What is foreshadowed by the page 233 description of their "lover's lane"?

8. What plot events--one immediate and one later--are foreshadowed by the narrator's description of "the bodies of lovers...visible in lightning flashes, scattered like the fallen on a battlefield" (234)?

9. On the night in the lover's lane toward the end of the story, what does the narrator realize about his relationship with Gin?

10. How is the From Here to Eternity love scene evoked ironically when the narrator and Gin are on the beach?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Dybek borrowed from a famous passage of writing referred to as "Molly Bloom's Soliloquy," which is available online. Research background information on this passage and then read its text. Write an essay in which you demonstrate how and where Dybek's writing in "We Didn't" has been influenced by Molly Bloom's Soliloquy from Joyce's Ulysses. Then, based on your background research, make and defend a claim about the appropriateness of this borrowing. Be sure to support your claims with quoted evidence from the text of both "We Didn't" and Ulysses, and cite your sources in MLA format.

Essay Topic 2

Write an essay that makes and defends a claim about the role of comic techniques in "We Didn't." Identify the techniques that are used as you offer your ideas about the purpose of including humorous moments in the story. Use quoted textual evidence to support your assertions.

Essay Topic 3

Write an essay in which you choose two passages from the story (of a paragraph or longer) and compare and contrast their syntax. Use this comparison and contrast to make a claim about how Dybek uses different patterns of syntax to accomplish different goals. Be sure to support your assertions with quoted textual evidence and to use precise literary terminology to label the techniques under discussion.

(see the answer keys)

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